OK here goes…Rosemary and Alan’s Trip 5/3 - 5/10:<br><br>Travel – <br>Uneventful, no delays, fine service from AA. We were mildly concerned at departure from ORD when it was announced that a passenger had checked in his luggage and then decided not to board, but luckily his stuff was close to the compartment door and we were only delayed about 10 minutes. We kind of liked the ATR flight from SJU in to SXM, no long lines, etc. Coming back through Miami customs was an experience, long lines, at both immigration and customs. AA had scheduled only about 90 minutes of time between flights so if anything had gone wrong there might have been trouble, but we got through smoothly and liked not having to sit around MIA for hours.<br><br>Car –<br>Another good experience with Prestige Car Rental (office right at GCBC and on the Mary’s Boon Road, Value Car Rental at that location). Good service, reasonable rate. Thanks Carole, if you read this. The gray Corolla (as opposed to white) was in fine shape and a pleasant surprise until we realized that the predominantly new rental Corolla color on the island seems to be gray.<br><br>Hotel – <br>Well…just a fine experience at GCBC. Room upgrade without a request, and they gave us the one night free deal offered on WIOL to boot. Thanks to Steve Wright, Patsy, Eddie, and Richard, if you read this. We have stayed at GCBC five times, and the experience, including dealing with staff, has always been the best. Nuff said.<br><br> Food –<br>Great lunches every day, I don’t know which one was the best. Mark’s Place, Sunset Café, Ms. B’s (try the chicken/ribs combo), Cheri’s Café, Bar de la Mer, and La Croissanterie (twice, thanks Bobcat!) Declined lunches at Talk of the Town and Calmos after they failed the 15 minute requirement (we provide a 15 minute time frame for restaurant staff to acknowledge our existence as metabolizing entities on the planet).<br><br>Dinners - <br>We had a fine meal at L’Auberge Gourmand (spectacular three chocolate dessert), but it was so hot in the room that the food was difficult to enjoy. Mario’s Bistro was good, but not exceptional. LePressior was only fair, with the tough and relatively tasteless rack of lamb and only decent grouper.<br><br>Sol e’ Luna was very disappointing, and although I usually don’t take the time to go into a long story about specific meals, this was such a negative experience that I will break my rule and expound a bit. Eddie from GCBC made reservations, I was present as he talked to the restaurant. Although we were advised we would be able to get a nice table on the side porch, when we got there, we were told all that was available was a table toward the back of the side area under the canvas. So we were misled about table availability in order to get us into the place. I suppose when this happened we just should have left. Some obvious friends of the management were dining at one of those big white booths over in the corner of the room. As we were having our salad we noticed that the staff screwed up their order, forgot to bring their salads, and brought their entrée out (one of which was the same “Crispy Snapper” entrée ordered by Rosemary). The staff took their entrées back to the kitchen and brought their salads out. We got our entrées within a few minutes of each other, and my wife’s “Crispy Snapper” was tepid, really almost cold, and soggy (as opposed to warm and crispy). After a long wait, we were delivered re-warmed snapper, which was now warm and soggy. It is clear to us that the friends of the management got a fresh snapper and we received an entrée that laid around for 25 minutes that they didn’t want to throw away or give to their pals in the corner. Although the management was pleasant enough and offered another entrée, by this time the experience was pretty much shot and we just wanted to get the hell out of there. My shrimp and scallops were also cold and not served properly either. We obviously find it objectionable to attempt to save the cost of a piece of fish at our expense.<br><br>So for the rest of the week, we frequented smaller local creole restaurants and were well rewarded with the best dinners of the week at Le Ti Coin Creole, Yvette’s, and Poulet D’Orleans.<br><br>Many thanks to whomever recommended Poulet D’Orleans a few weeks ago. It was THE great experience of the trip. We were waited on out on the porch by the Romney brothers: Malachi (18), Joshua (13), and Christian (11), who are the regular waitstaff, and all great kids. Their dad does the cooking back in the kitchen of the house. The dinners were delicious, chicken with peanut sauce, chicken with creole sauce, perfect vegetables. Delightful conversation with Malachi between courses, who gave us a remarkable family history. If anyone wants some fascinating Romney family lore let me know, but for now I will not presume to bore anybody with this stuff unless you’re really interested.<br><br>After this trip we have pretty much decided that after all these years, we agree with some others that the expensive places on the island really aren’t all that remarkable. The really special dining experiences are to be had at the smaller creole places like Yvette’s, Poulet D’O, and Le Ti Coin Creole. Future trips will likely find us frequenting such places and foregoing Grand Case, Mario’s, etc.<br><br>Artsy and other stuff – <br>Islitza Popova’s gallery on the Boo Boo Jam road, beautiful pastels and acrylics.<br>Dona Bryheil in the Oyster Pond area, lovely woman and great art, we bought some prints.<br>The Perfect Ti Pot – on Petit Plage Road just before GCBC. Cecile Petreluzzi is a young potter who makes beautiful items in her charming studio right in Grand Case. We bought a bunch of pots. She is remarkably talented and great fun to talk with, born and raised on Guadeloupe, educated in Florida. Don’t miss it.<br>We also bought our usual load of locally silk screened T-shirts from Claudine at the Marigot Market.<br>Thursday night 5/9 at PLP we met up with: John & Toddy, Frank & Anna, SusanD & Ron, Beacon Hill Andrea (great “how we found SXM” story), Jim Broderick, Susan, and please forgive my diminishing dendritic material, the new folks from Bakersfield whose names escape me now. Very nice time meeting everybody, sorry we had to leave so early, but our trip back the next day was looming.<br><br><br>Other than that, we just took long beach walks and relaxed. Very nice trip, it went way too fast. I’ll post some pictures after I figure out how to use my new digital camera software. This is way longer than I intended, so my apologies in advance.<br><br><br>PS – the flag over the restaurant says “Repaire du Pirate”, didn’t eat there though.<br>